For Tomorrow We Die
by Kudzu1
Summary: The clone troopers got the best of the war and the worst of it. But, so long as the Grand Army of the Republic lives, it shall never die. A clone commander's faith is cemented.


For Tomorrow We Die  
By Kudzu

"_Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us"  
_II Nephi 28 Chiasm, _The Book of Mormon_

The thirty-something Admiral Kohl Seerdon had thin, dark hair trimmed close to his scalp and narrow sideburns extending not quite past his ears. His features were sharp-nosed and edge-browed, with a pressed-together cold smile seeming to permanently play about his frugal white lips. His build was not broad; beneath his Republic naval uniform, his shoulders could almost be called bony. His fingers were long and pale, and his boot size was small.

In short, everything about Admiral Seerdon was thin, including his line of patience tethering his temper, which was short as such. A single good strain could snap that line of patience, thin as it was, and plunge those unlucky enough to be in his way into a world of verbal abuse, demotion, and occasional threatening with the business end of a blaster pistol.

He was the flag officer of the _Mandator_-class Star Dreadnought (Mark II) _Pride of the Core_ - one of the extremely few Star Dreadnoughts that were in active Republic service, both an instrument of (inflated) propaganda and of mass destruction - and the Republic's military commander of the Devil's Claw Armada. He was also one of the most unpopular commanders in the entire Galactic Republic, almost universally loathed by underlings clone and enlistee alike.

"Agents in the Naviho system report that a Confederacy army is mobilizing there, sir," said Clone Marshal Commander CC-1787, hiding his distaste for the arrogant, short-fused admiral behind a veneer of calm professionalism. He knew full well what Seerdon's orders would be, of course, and it would be the death of more thousands in a vain attack.

"How many strong?" Seerdon queried.

CC-1787 replied, "Estimates range from approximately one million battle droids with ten thousand armored units including AATs in support to almost three times that, sir."

"Why don't we have _accurate_ data?" he spat irritably.

"Espionage is a delicate affair, sir, from what I'm told," CC-1787 said carefully. "More foundries are being set up, and they're fortifying. Reports suggest that Naviho III is being turned into another production planet."

"Unacceptable," Seerdon said swiftly. "Troops and ships must be dispatched. The Naviho system's not two parsecs from here; a strike force can be there by tomorrow. Commander Gavh, I will appoint you to lead the attack."

Inwardly, CC-1787 "Gavh" heaved a deep sigh, but externally, he simply nodded and gave a sharp salute. "As you wish, sir."

"I'll give you details on the mission when I get around to composing it," he said. "For now, you're dismissed. Prepare your men."

"Sir!"

Gavh hastened from the bridge of _Pride of the Core_. He'd known that Seerdon's orders were coming, and that he would be appointed to lead the mission. He knew that Seerdon would send a drastically underpowered force out of the man's own frugality, or out of a tactically pragmatic strategy to probe the nebula before plunging full in. And of course, the admiral wouldn't send _Pride of the Core_ to the Naviho system itself, risking his life, or worse, his prestigious and inspiring command. While claims that the eight-kilometer warship could destroy a fleet of thousands of Separatist ships were much exaggerated, it was certainly more than a match for a flotilla maybe even thirty _Lucrehulk_-class "donut ships" strong. Nonetheless, it had heretoforth seen little live-fire action out of Seerdon's own burning desire not to put his own self in even the remotest of danger.

In short, Gavh and probably several hundred thousand clone troopers more were about to be sent to their deaths.

He decided that, just this once, he would arrange a sending-away party. There was nothing to celebrate, of course, except for unflinching service to the Republic - they could all take pride in that, he thought - but it would almost certainly be the last evening, by Galactic Standard Time, that they would ever have again. It seemed a waste not to spend it somehow.

* * *

It was an alien thing. His comrades stood and sat awkwardly about, unsure of how they were supposed to act and interact in the informal setting. Food and refreshments aboard the _Acclamator_-class transport ship that was to take them to their final destination was unavailable save for in the form of ration cubes, but the crew had scrounged up some mostly barebones additions: jerked nerf meat, a freeze-dried dessert called "balled ice cream", and also a few kegs of _ne'tra gal_ Mandalorian ale supplied by a defector from the legendary supercommandos' ranks. He had declined attendance himself, professing to be uncomfortable with the idea of consorting so casually with so many doomed copies of the former Mandalore (in fewer words: namely that he was apparently feeling ill at the present time).

Commander Gavh gnawed at the tough nerf jerky, which was clearly weeks old and not of particularly high quality. But he had only limited experience with regular Human galactic cuisine, and it was something better than the ration cubes at least. Seerdon might have had his head for setting up something like this, and might have ripped out his heart and eaten it for brashly ignoring the dietary restrictions of the clone trooper corps, but frankly he didn't care. He was as good as dead now anyway. Seerdon, evidently in a particularly stingy mood today, had allotted his army just ten _Acclamators_ and three _Venator_-class Star Destroyers, not even giving them a _Victory_-class heavy cruiser or a screen of smaller ships to give them support against the Confederacy fleet in orbit, and only 180,000 clone trooper infantry units with 300 AT-TE walkers and 620 AT-PTs, along with 1,500 speederbike-mounted lancers.

Against a million or more droids entrenched in their positions and with an enemy fleet in-system, it was a suicide mission.

Quietly, he stared past the mostly silent clone troopers, wearing their off-duty jumpsuits without armor over them, and towards the _ne'tra gal_ tankards.

Mandalore's sons, now blaster fodder to test the strength of a vastly superior enemy force.

"How far have we fallen," he murmured aloud.

One of his most distinguished men, Captain Gray, looked over at him and asked, "Pardon, sir?"

"Just thinking," Gavh answered. "We can't survive this."

"No, sir."

One of the other clone troopers - Gavh couldn't tell who, as unlike Gray, who could be told apart from the rest of them by a patch of burn scarring on his right cheek, the clone lacked a recognizable mark - spoke up: "We'll have to give them our best, sir."

"'Our best' won't cover our numerical deficit, trooper," he said curtly. "We'll do our job, and take down as many tinnies as we can before they get all of us."

"That's all we do, sir," Gray nodded assent. "That's our job."

There was typically a bit more optimism implied with the job description. The Republic was expected to win the Wars, of course, and the Grand Army of the Republic was called "insurmountable" and "unstoppable" - "the most deadly army ever created". That was what the positive-thinking Loyalists said, and the conservative bloc of galactic citizens chimed in with their uneducated, inexpert opinions largely echoing what their revered leaders said.

The Separatist Droid Army, conversely, was rumored to be quadrillions strong. Even though propaganda doubtless inflated the numbers immensely, just as propaganda surrounding the bare handful of _Mandator_-class Star Dreadnoughts was now keeping Separatists and their sympathizers located in the Core and Inner Rim living in a world of fear centering around the notion of one of the legendary monster ships, capable of destroying a thousand or more frigates in mere minutes, just dropping in on them one day, it was still an impressive figure, and surely with the number of production worlds in the Confederacy of Independent Systems' controlled space, it wasn't an overly bloated one either - and it was certainly much, much more than even the ever-expanding total of trooper units in the Grand Army. Though the latter was far superior in terms of their ability to innovate and learn on an independent level, and simply because they could draw upon (even limited, focused, and semi-sheltered) human experience, numbers could hardly be discounted and sometimes just the presence of a garrison in even a territory as large as a galactic sector was even to dissuade any potential attacks or uprisings against the garrison master's control over that area.

Just the mere possibility of such a sizeable opposing force, the mere feasibility of it, was overwhelming to the point of threatening to demoralize the Republic's own forces so far enough as so to be very dangerous, even hazard enough to risk the outcome of the war and a victory for Dooku, Grievous, and the rest of the monsters, along with the huge number of corrupt corporations and their leaders, in charge of the enemy faction, which Gavh knew would be a disastrous and unacceptable failure: completely unacceptable for any of them as the Republic's most loyal cadre of soldiers. It would just as such be a colossal letdown for the galaxy that would fate them to maybe even full generations of misery under the iron heels of the Sith, along with greedy fools like Gunray and his vile cronies on the Separatist Council. Even if that reign did not last quite that long, then what would bring them down in the end but long years of violence, terrorism (not necessary unjustified, but destructive, disruptive, and chaotic nonetheless), rebellion, and guerrilla warfare, which would devastate infrastructure, damage populations, and generally destroy any stability left in the galaxy?

The Grand Army could never let this happen, because it was their creed of creation that assured that they must be ultimately victorious, whether "the end" was bitter or an overwhelming triumph, and that creed could not be defied, lest their very bringing into this world was for absolutely nothing and their lives were all simply wasted.

_What if they already are wasted?_ a voice whispered in Gavh's mind that he tried to ignore, because it should never have spoken to him in the first place and he didn't know or care to know from whence it came.

Their lives, wasted on a great Republic that they allowed to fail because of terror stricken in them by the prospect of facing a more powerful enemy: something that, by its very nature, was utterly intolerable, for a clone was not supposed to have or ever know fear, but only confidence, courage, and deathless bravery in the face of certain annihilation, as they were to face so shortly - the prospect was not possible.

That confidence, though, that confidence that they would retain was just so symbolic of that ultimate struggle, Gavh thought, that the fate of the galaxy rested upon and which was, most aptly, the battle between light and dark, and even the internal conflict of fight-or-flee, stand-or-retreat, unify-or-shatter, rally-or-run, in which the former choice would always be second nature to him even when the latter might be the first instinct in every normal sentient being's mind. He knew that he light side was that of the Republic and those warriors who were the stalwart defenders of that mighty justice that they'd been always raised to fight for and guard with their very lives to the brink of utter destruction, and the dark side was the enemy who skulked in the shadows and begged for mercy when they feared defeat, turned tail when they feared defeat, cut deals when they feared defeat, and would never be the resolute fighters that the clone troopers, brave men of the Galactic Republic's finest justice, were. Even the Jedi could grudgingly be called pillars and bastions of utter right.

They, the clones, would go to their deaths boldly, even with the knowledge that they could not win in this duel of lasers that would consume them. But they would do as much damage as possible, damage that not even Seerdon in his arrogance and overconfidence in the drastic superiority of the Grand Army of the Republic unit-to-unit over the Separatist military (or pure selfish frugality and unwillingness to risk himself or to risk humiliation) could think them possible of inflicting, before the blaze of glory that might consume them. Even a quick, ignoble death could not diminish the glowing flame that was the GAR and could not destroy them in the end, where they would be ultimately victorious and would never have forsaken that creed upon which they were at once made from genetic tissue and a life-giving spark and inducted into that proud fighting force: the most deadly army ever created.

Seerdon was a coward. Seerdon was fit for the Confederacy's service better than he was for the Republic's. It was a treasonous thought, but no mind-reader was here to leech it from his brain and convict him of the crime.

Gavh bore him no ill will. The verdict was that he and thousands more were to lay down their lives for the Republic; their creed of creation dictated that he would follow it without complaint, and he had no intention of complaining. It was simply an order. It had been given. Gavh would carry it out, just as he would any order.

He was prepared to give his life. He was prepared to die. He had been prepared to die since the day he came into consciousness or before.

"It is indeed," he said softly in response to Gray's words. "It is indeed, and I'm proud to do it myself."

"Wouldn't give it for the world," said the clone captain. There was a small smile on his face, brimming with quiet confidence and knowing.

They were two minds made from the same. Gray's thoughts concluded just as did Gavh's own. Their vows were one and the same. They were clones; they were brothers; they were soldiers, and they were comrades-in-arms, and each and every one of them in this assembly would have given his life in a heartbeat to spare another death for just long enough that he might fire one last shot.

And that made them superior.

They did not fear death. They need not fear failure. They were unafraid down to the last identical man of them all. Life's termination meant nothing. Individually, they were dust. Defeat, at the very end of that ultimate struggle, was impossible. Together, they were insurmountable, unstoppable.

They had one last evening, and it seemed a waste not to spend it somehow.

Gavh let a grin slip across his expression, and then he stood and crossed the room. The tap on the ale keg spilled forth dark liquor into his plasteine cup - not a fancy implement, but it worked - with thick rings of foam building up on top. When it was nearly overflowing with the heavy froth, he let his finger up on the fluid release button and turned, cup in hand and almost sloshing over as he pivoted, to face his brothers.

"Come and get your fill, boys."

One by one, they rose from where they were sitting, if that was the position they were in, and filed over to the table where it had been set up in the cleared storage bay aboard the big transport _Ascension_. There was only enough ale for a couple platoons, but those who were left with empty cups did not complain and merely stood graciously by, not a trace of envy in any of their eyes or upon any of their faces.

They were men of military perfection, the epitome of the perfect Human soldier. They were impeccable in a way that even battle droids could never beat. Clone Marshal Commander Gavh smiled again as he looked from man to man. No face was alien; none differed too drastically from that of the brother beside them, if they differed any at all. He was so very proud of each and every one of them.

Alone, it was all worth celebrating.

When the last ale barrel had gone dry and every clone stood assembled, Gavh raised his cup.

"This is our last supper," he said with stoic empiricism. "We depart for the Naviho system tomorrow. Our reception committee may prove unwelcoming."

Slight chuckles and deprecatory smiles flickered about the room.

"It has been an honor to lead you and fight alongside you - each and every one - so far, through every battle we've faced together. For one last run, I do not hope but _know_ that it will be every bit as much an honor. We are the Grand Army of the Republic. We do not shirk from duty and death."

A cheer went up in unison. It was a thing so organic that Gavh felt an odd tightness in his chest and a strange, almost nostalgic emotion that he'd never thought he'd experienced before.

He went on. "We are the Grand Army of the Republic, my brothers. We seed the stars."

"We seed the stars!" they exclaimed.

The emotion swelling, Gavh lifted his cup again. "So, my brothers, we may not live to see tomorrow evening. We _will_ not live to see tomorrow evening. But we'll give 'em hell before the end."

Cheers again, and moisture at the corner of the commander's eye.

"And thus -" he lowered the cup from aloft to his lips and took a deep swig of the bittersweet, rich ale within. "Today we drink…"

Those of them who had _ne'tra gal_ in their plasteine glasses lifted them to their mouths and drank deeply as well, then they all bellowed - every man as one infinite, insuppressible body - that majestic, sweeping, immortal conclusion: "For tomorrow we die!"


End file.
